Sweeney Todd: Final Scene
by iRantOften
Summary: "Toby, where are you, love?" Her voice lilts dangerously, soft tone masquerading the underlying purpose of the words.


_**Okay, so, I understand that it's not exactly fanfiction, but rather just relaying the events of the final scene. I'm merely using this as writing practice for description, mainly voices and setting, considering it was a musical and all. I do, however, intend to change the end up a bit, as in not kill Lovett b'cause she's my favourite. Heh, yeah. I'm thinking about him perhaps killing Johanna instead somehow or another...**_

_**IMPORTANT. I am doing this purely by memory [I watched this movie perhaps two months ago], a script [which poses to be pretty inaccurate] and the soundtrack. So yeah. Slow going and with a lot of guesswork. I guess that doesn't really matter since it's fanfiction and I'm allowed to change it, but that's not the purpose of this piece and I almost feel guilty doing so. Yeah. Anyhow, enjoy...?**_

_**Disclaimer: I, sadly, do not own the movie nor the characters. I am, however, saving up to buy Mrs. Lovett. xD**_

"Toby, where are you, love?" Her voice lilts dangerously, soft tone masquerading the underlying purpose of the words. The notes aren't right; they're so eerily off pitch. The sound echoes throughout the dank, stale passages, mingling with the shadows and reverberating off the bloodstained walls. "Where is he?" she breathes, glancing over at Mr. Todd.

Sweeney shrugs, a hardly noticeable gesture in the thick gloom, and leaps over the thin trickle of the sewer to scan the other side for the boy.

She raises her eyebrows, furrowed together, in an anxious sensation of guilt and fear, swallowing hard and continuing. "Nothing's gonna harm you," she lulls. "Not while I'm around." Nellie takes a deep breath and shudders, hearing the words, "I'm around," her own words, coming back to her, taunting her from farther down the passage. She hikes her skirts up a little higher, though it's no use as she can already make out the scarlet stains working their way up the edges of the fabric.

"Toby?" calls Todd, stepping lightly, his razors glinting in the dim light. "Toby!" Still no response.

"Nothing's gonna harm you, darling," Nellie tries, fighting her gag reflex at the smell. "Not while I'm around." Her last words hang in the silence far too long, resounding in her head, every bit as real as the sound waves themselves.

Sweeney's a few feet ahead of her on the other side, swinging his torch before him and being sure to keep his razors out of sight, hidden behind his back. "Toby!" he growls, and Mrs. Lovett glances over at him, noticing his voice hazardously close to the edge of false innocence. Her eyes plead and he drops his tone ever so slightly, if only for the sake of finding the boy. "Toby."

"Mr. Todd!" cries the young man, coming to an ungraceful halt just inside the doorway of the second story building. "Mr. Todd?" He glances about in confusion and then, satisfied with its emptiness, escorts Johanna in. "You wait for him here. I'll return with a coach in less than half an hour." Pausing and reaching up a hand to stroke her cheek, he adds, "Don't worry. No one will recognize you. You're safe now."

"Safe?" she questions, her light-coloured brows furrowing. "So we run away and then all our dreams come true?"

Anthony casts her a faint smile. "I hope so."

"I've never had dreams," Johanna confesses, pressing her face into his tender embrace and cupping his hand in her own. "Only nightmares."

"Johanna," he says, lifting her chin lightly and drawing her eyes to his in a steady gaze, "when we're free of this place, all the ghosts will go away."

She pulls away slightly, her hand falling away from his. "No, Anthony," she murmurs, backing up. "They'll never go away."

The boy shifts his weight awkwardly to his other foot, caught off guard by her ominous response. "I'll be right back to you," he promises, nodding slightly as though to guarantee it. "In a half an hour we'll be free of this place." With that, he smiles faintly and darts out.

"Beadle, Beadle," croons a high, airy voice. "No good hiding, I saw you…" Her song fills the room even before she enters, shadow cast on the floor from the light of the hallway outside.

Johanna stifles a gasp and searches frantically for a place big enough to hide. The only hiding spot suitable, she decides, is a big wooden chest to the side of the room, next to the doorway. She quickly opens it and ducks into it, folding herself into a ball and slowly, quietly, shuts the lid.

"Are you in there still, Beadle?" demands the voice, soon followed by a poor, ragged soul, staggering into the room, swaying this way and that in search of the man. "Beadle, _Beadle…_"

The girl in hiding flinches at the sharp edge of the voice as it pronounces that name, enunciating far too strongly on the 'B'. She opens her eyes, trying to make out any of her surroundings. _What's that fowl smell? _she wonders, one fingers running over the wall of her confinement. Something warm and sticky drips down from the lid, catching on her bottom lip. She darts out a tongue cautiously, tasting it, and- _Blood! _She gasps, then slaps a hand to her mouth.

Luckily, her utterance has passed by unnoticed.

"Beadle-edle-edle dumpling, bea-deadle dumpling," chants the voice; if her words could dance, they would be tap dancing. "Be dee, be dee, be dee, be dee, be dee, be dee," she repeats, her melody dipping and swooning, increasing in volume and speed, until-

"Who are you?" rumbles a male voice. "What are you doing here?"

Johanna lifts the lid ever so slightly, peering out at the scene before her. Her vision is restricted; all she can make out is the bottom of a dress, and a long, dark shadow being cast from the doorway of the loft.

"Is it in here, sir?" rambles the woman, a giddy smile plastered onto her face. She reaches forward and grabs at his sleeve, desperate to be heard. "The stink of evil from below! From her!" Her tone drops drastically, a gravelly noise now, "Beware of it, sir! She with no _pity_ in her heart!"

A few drops of saliva actually spew from her mouth on the word 'pity', catching just below Sweeney's bottom lip. His brows furrow in what could almost in another light bear resemblance to confusion, and he reaches up a hand, brushing it off.

"Hey, don't I know you, mister…?" drones the female voice, and the woman in rags' face contorts into a look of nostalgia; she leans forward ever so slightly…


End file.
